Two of my new pieces in 2009, On the Way to Fwarrheu (stereo) and Talk to Us! (five-channel), were played on the first-day concert from “FÜNF PLUS EINS” at the Kleine Wasserspeicher in Berlin on the 17th of September, 2009.

The venue was an old water reservoir and had very long reverberation time, and they put some 24 speakers around the venue. It was an interesting experience to present the piece. I liked the sound of the stereo piece (On the Way to Fwarrheu) there, but not that of the five-channel piece. It was all over the place and at the same time, none of the place!

Some people seemed to quite like both pieces, but my experience of the pieces was a very unnerving one. 

I could have composed a piece just for that space, but decided not to do that. The concert also programmed a piece by Edwin van der Heide, who was guest professor at the Technical University in Berlin and currently teaches in the Netherlands. His piece sounded very good in that space. He mainly used synthesized sine waves and clicks. My wife said to me after the concert that it was as if she had been put into a brain massage. 

I thought about this for a while. Whenever I listened to this kind of pieces, I always liked the experience. I wondered-: but then why don't I make a piece like that? Perhaps I could try one. It will be interesting. But It seemed that a piece like this would always need a place with peculiar spatial qualities. In other words, it should be a site-specific piece. More thoughts will follow on this one...